Dragon Age: Last Flight

by Liane Merciel

  “You don’t need the strength of another soul to keep you going?”

  I had you, she thought, but she didn’t say it. Since childhood, Garahel had been with her: a protector when their parents vanished and left them to the uncertain mercies of human society, a guide when her magical gifts made their first terrifying appearance, a comforting shoulder in the cold confines of the Circle. He had come to the Grey Wardens with her, or she with him—it was hard to remember which it was now, if there had ever been a clear answer to that.

  And then they’d split apart. She couldn’t begrudge him that, not really. He deserved happiness, and she liked Amadis.

  But she hated the hurt of parting.

  “I have my griffon.” Isseya crossed the room, turning her back on her brother. “Revas is all the strength I need. But the same cannot be said for you, so … take her to their roosts. Help Amadis choose her griffon. Help her fly. The wonder of it should buy you forgiveness.”

  “It was her idea in the first place,” Garahel grumbled. “She said I should go to the queen.”

  “But you’re the one who did it.”

  “I’m well aware.” He sighed, and in that unguarded moment Isseya saw how much her brother had aged in the near-decade of their war. From ten paces away, he still looked the perfect picture of a heroic Grey Warden, but up close he was thinner and wearier. There were lines on his brow and along the sides of his mouth that seemed to belong to a much older face. Although Garahel was barely over thirty, scattered strands of gray dimmed the golden luster of his hair.

  “Take her to the roosts,” Isseya urged again, more gently. “When she flies, she’ll forgive. Do we have enough riderless griffons for her to have a fair choice?”

  “More than fair, I’m afraid. Our losses were not small.”

  “Then go and salvage some joy from our sorrows,” Isseya said.

  * * *

  An hour later, Isseya went up to watch them fly.

  She knew when Amadis was in the air because the Ruby Drakes cheered their leader so loudly that it was impossible not to know. While the elf had intended to spend her day studying a newly discovered quirk of blood magic that she thought might prove particularly lethal to darkspawn, the mercenaries’ clamor made it impossible to concentrate.

  Vials of blood and philters of lyrium couldn’t hold her attention, anyway. She’d had her fill of spellcraft and suffering for a while. Sunlight and the wind through her hair would be more welcome.

  Revas was glad to see her. The griffon raised her head and trumpeted a shrill greeting at the sight of her mistress, then tucked her ears down and leaned in for a scratch. Isseya obliged happily, noting in passing that the gray around Revas’s muzzle had changed from a light dusting at the base of her cere to a long beard that whitened her throat down to her chest.

  Her griffon was getting old. It was a bittersweet thought. Not many of the Wardens’ fighting griffons lived so long, not anymore; the fact that Revas had survived the worst of the war, year after year, was testament to her strength and determination. And she was still strong, still fast in the air and lethal in combat.

  But for how much longer? It might be time to think of retiring Revas, and sending her away to the safety of the roosts in Weisshaupt, before some ogre’s boulder or hurlock’s arrow stole the decision from her.

  Isseya closed her eyes and buried her face in the griffon’s coarse black fur. The familiar musky smell of her steed—that mixture of leonine roughness and trapped sunlight and the faint rank whiff of old blood from past meals—filled her nostrils. She never wanted to let go.

  But she had to, eventually. When she did, her eyes were blurred with unexpected tears. She blinked them away, looking up to the sky so they wouldn’t fall.

  Amadis was there, circling on a thermal, Garahel and Crookytail following close behind on wide wings. Isseya could hardly see the woman, but she recognized the griffon easily enough. It was a young, smallish female with a distinctive blue tinge to her ash-gray fur and plumage and irregular black banding across her wings. She seemed to be flying confidently, even with a novice rider at her reins.

  Her name was Smoke, and she’d lost her original rider to a darkspawn assassin’s poisoned blades a month ago. Smoke had barely been out of training, and she hadn’t had time to bond closely to her rider before he was slain in that ambush. Since then, the young griffon had traveled from outpost to outpost as a messenger bird, ridden by whatever Grey Warden needed a fresh mount to carry her swiftly to another of their strongholds.

  It wasn’t a bad life, and in many ways it was safer than bearing a rider into the thick of combat … but rare was the griffon who preferred messenger duty to the rush and tumult of fighting beside a bonded partner. Isseya wasn’t surprised that Smoke had chosen Amadis, nor that Amadis had chosen Smoke.

  She wished them well, and then she took Revas aloft for her own run across the sky.

  The thrill of it never diminished. The wind in her hair, the sharp clarity of the air in her lungs, the sheer soaring freedom of being liberated from the sorrows and burdens of the earthbound world … there was nothing in all the Maker’s creation that could compare. Nothing.

  Swiftly she flew over the smoldering battlefields around Hossberg and the pyres of darkspawn corpses poisoning the sky with their oily black smoke. It wasn’t that ugliness she wanted to see.

  Far from where their friends had fought and died, Isseya sent Revas wheeling across the stony plains and yawning steppes of the Anderfels. Below them the Lattenfluss was a gleaming thread of silver in a wider ribbon of rich, green-fringed brown. From this height, it was possible to imagine that the river was healthy, if low in its banks, and the trees that lined the mud on its sides weren’t patchy and thin after years of weak sun and Blight sickness. She could almost—almost—pretend the world was normal again.

  It wasn’t, of course. Not really. All too soon, they’d have to fly back through the filthy stench of those pyres, back into Hossberg and the Blight and this awful war that had no end.

  But Isseya cherished the illusion for as long as she could make it last, and she clung to its memory after they’d returned to the castle.

  Garahel and Amadis had gotten back before she had. She saw their griffons in the courtyard, already unsaddled and groomed; from the way Crookytail dipped his head flirtatiously while offering gobbets of freshly killed goat to Smoke, it seemed his feelings for the blue female mirrored his rider’s for hers.

  Revas snorted at the sight, and Isseya echoed her. She lifted the saddle from her black griffon and sent Revas off to devour her own goat, then went back into the fortress. Its shadows settled on her shoulders like a leaden mantle.

  She wanted to hold on to the illusion of her golden day, and had hoped to avoid talking to anyone as long as possible, but the fates did not see fit to cooperate. Almost as soon as Isseya ventured into the kitchens, searching for bread and wine, Calien cornered her.

  “Have you heard?” the mage demanded. “We’re being sent to Fortress Haine.”

  “Fortress Haine?” Isseya said blankly, pilfering a seeded roll from one of the kitchen baskets. She’d never heard of the place.

  “It’s in the Vimmark Mountains. Deep in the Vimmark Mountains. It’s a bat-infested ruin of a place that used to belong to one Lord Norbert de la Haine, remembered for having an unfortunate fondness for pickled lampreys and also for being completely delusional with regard to his ability to conquer the Free Marches. The Crows killed him, and his castle sat empty for two generations. Now the Grey Wardens have claimed it as a stronghold and they’re sending us there.”

  Isseya added a quartered roast chicken and a bottle of wine to her haul. It was only a half bottle, and it was a poor sour red that would scarcely have been acceptable as cooking wine in better years … but any grape that survived the Blight long enough to reach the cask was a treasure these days. “Why?”

  Calien ran a hand through his hair. “Because the Free Marches are being overrun. We had three m
essengers today, none bearing good news. Cumberland and Kirkwall are seriously threatened. Starkhaven, they say, is at risk of falling. Their only chance at survival is unity, and none of the cities is willing to leave its civilians to the darkspawn’s mercies. Garahel told them what you did at Wycome. The First Warden wants to prepare a stronghold in the mountains under Fortress Haine that may be large enough to serve as a refuge for the Marchers if need be.”

  “Did Garahel volunteer us for this?” Isseya intended to have sharp words with her brother if he had. She did not need to be coddled away from the front lines.

  But Calien was shaking his head. “Warden-Commander Alsiana asked for you by name. Fortress Haine will need extensive work to be made ready for the number of refugees it might have to hold, and it’s well known that you’ve been able to achieve things with force magic that others cannot. The trick you pulled with the evacuation of Wycome—those floating aravels? They say it might be necessary for moving refugees into the Retreat.”

  “Is that what they’re calling it? The Retreat? It seems an ill-omened name.”

  “The Free Marches are a bit past needing omens to tell them they’re in trouble,” Calien said dryly. “Garahel insists that we must not give up hope, and certainly he’s doing all he can to muster a fight for them. He’s got Queen Mariwen’s army, and winning Hossberg should carry most of the Anders. His gift of the griffon not only sealed the Ruby Drakes to his side, but won over another half dozen companies whose captains are dreaming of their own winged steeds. The Company of the Lion’s commander is already boasting that he’ll be saving ogre scalps to make his future griffon’s saddle blanket.” He drew a breath. “Your brother is a miracle worker, Isseya. If anyone can save the Free Marches, it’s him. He’s going to Orlais next, to pull whatever support he can get from those masked fops. But he needs the Free Marchers, too, and if they’re scattered trying to defend their own homes and families—”

  “We’ll lose everything. Yes, I understand.”

  “Good.” He gestured to the wine bottle. “Would you care for some help with that? Might not be prudent to drink it all on your own. Garahel wants us gone before sundown.”

  Isseya glanced at the window. The courtyard shadows were long and slanting, bathing the kitchen’s narrow open window in blue. She’d spent nearly the entire day riding with Revas, and there wasn’t much time left before the appointed hour.

  She offered him the bottle with a flourish. “By all means. One for the road.”

  * * *

  Fortress Haine really was in the middle of nowhere.

  Located in the remote western reaches of the Vimmark Mountains, the castle and its surrounding lands had been left relatively unscarred by the Blight. The forests remained lush and green, and the streams that leaped down the steep rock faces were full and strong. The territorial cries of wyverns trumpeted belligerently from the high crags as Revas descended toward the fortress; evidently enough game endured in the wilds to sustain the great beasts, and they retained the bravado to challenge a flight of five griffons with ten riders.

  There wasn’t much else. The castle village seemed to be abandoned. Its fields were thick with weeds and brambles, the log fences around the pine-choked pastures had fallen into disrepair, and the houses were inhabited only by bats and foxes. Either Lord de la Haine’s people had deserted him when he’d announced his treachery, or they’d been driven off after his death at the hands of the Antivan Crows.

  “We’ll have to build all of this back again,” Isseya said, guiding Revas down toward the castle courtyard. It was an enormous fortress, at least. Its proud stone walls were high and strong, and its towers commanded clear views of the surroundings. Since Fortress Haine had fallen to assassination rather than siege, none of its defenses had been damaged by anything worse than time and neglect.

  The Grey Wardens had already begun tearing out the wild overgrowth of the ornamental gardens and replacing them with less beautiful, but more practical, rows of herbs and vegetables. Unfinished rabbit hutches and chicken coops lined some of the smaller gardens.

  “At least we’ve got decent materials, for once,” Calien replied. “Plenty of wood, stone, clean water, decent pasture. Game and good foraging in the foothills. The fortress itself looks strong. We’ve had to work with less everywhere else.”

  “We’ve had less to do, too,” Isseya said. “Garahel really expects this place to hold all the Free Marchers?”

  “Not all of them. But … some significant proportion, yes. Call it a few thousand?”

  “A few thousand. And almost all noncombatants, or else we’ve defeated the purpose. Where could we possibly put them? It’s a big castle, but not that big.” Isseya shook her head. Revas alighted on one of the walls, catching herself on its crenellations and flaring her wings outward to break her momentum. The suddenness of her stop jolted both riders forward, even though they were braced against the impact.

  Isseya disengaged herself from the saddle and climbed out onto the wall. Calien followed her, rubbing his neck and casting an annoyed glance back at Revas, who preened her wings proudly on her perch. The other griffons were landing in the courtyard, tossing up a cloud of dust that was soon large enough to obscure them all.

  As they climbed down to join the rest of the new arrivals in the courtyard, Isseya examined what she could of the castle’s defenses. Fortress Haine had been empty for about thirty years, since the death of its previous lord, if the records she’d been given were accurate. It had survived the intervening decades of neglect quite well, considering, which pleased her.

  She was even more pleased when she emerged from the tower stairwell to see a familiar, heavily tattooed figure bustling up to greet them. The dwarven Warden Ogosa of Orzammar had been born casteless in her home city. Considered a worthless “nonperson” by her own culture, Ogosa had been quick to abandon the dwarves and join the Grey Wardens when the Blight struck and the call came for dwarven assistance. Orzammar’s loss was the allies’ gain; Ogosa was clever, resourceful, and a tireless fighter.

  “Isseya!” the redheaded dwarf cried as the two mages came blinking into the sunlight. She swept the elf up in a crushing hug. “They said you’d been exiled here, but I didn’t believe it until I saw your black bird.”

  “Glad to see you too,” Isseya said, gasping. She pulled away, recovering her breath. “I thought you were in Orlais.”

  Ogosa made a face. “I was. It turns out the Orlesians don’t much care for taking orders from a casteless dwarf. It also turns out that I don’t care for having to argue with people to help them. Anyway, after I punched a mouthy chevalier’s stupid tin mask in, the Warden-Commander agreed that it wasn’t a good fit and reassigned me here.”

  “Lucky me,” Isseya said. “So, what do I have?”

  “Maybe two dozen people right now,” Ogosa replied. “Half Grey Wardens, half farmers and builders. There’s some who are both, of course, but … we’re going to need more hands to do all that needs doing around the fortress. More soldiers, more masons, more brush-clearers, more cooks, more everything.”

  “We should be able to find most of those skills among the incoming refugees. I’ll send word out that we’re looking, and start work on the transport vehicles as our first priority.”

  Ogosa nodded. Her bright red hair was woven into a dozen tight braids that lay flat against her scalp; the braids clattered with pierced copper coins on their ends. It was a Chasind style that the dwarf had adopted soon after coming to the surface: a small rebellion against her own people. “Good. The castle’s in decent shape, mostly. The village farms aren’t. We’ll need food for all these people, and the sooner we can get fields cleared and seeds in the ground, the sooner we’ll be able to start laying in stores. Bring them in first.”

  “I’ll do that.” Isseya looked up at the soaring white reach of Fortress Haine, shading her eyes against the sun. “How many people do you think we could fit in here? Civilians, I mean.”

  “Civilians?” Ogosa g
nawed her lower lip, following Isseya’s gaze. “We don’t have enough food for much more than we’ve got now, and we don’t have enough water for more than a couple hundred. Those are your first limiting factors.”

  “And then?”

  “The next limitation is the physical structure. The castle. We can house any number of refugees down in the village, if they’re willing to work to clear their own fields and build their own homes. The Vimmarks are remote and full of monsters, but because of that, they’ve been left mostly clear of the Blight. I’m sure you noticed while you were coming in that the land’s richer than almost anything left in the Free Marches.”

  “I saw that, yes.”

  “So we can put maybe a thousand, two thousand people in the village, provided we add them gradually. But if the darkspawn come … they’ll need somewhere safe to go, and the castle won’t hold them all.”

  “What do we do?” Isseya asked.

  The dwarf’s hazel eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m glad you asked. As it happens, I do have a solution in mind.”

  “Excellent. What is it?”

  “Simple,” said Ogosa. “We’re going to put them inside the mountain.”

  18

  5:20 EXALTED

  To her own considerable surprise, Isseya found that she enjoyed the challenge of bringing Fortress Haine back to usefulness.

  It helped, of course, that her efforts went smoothly. The Vimmark forests provided ample material for constructing larger and more streamlined versions of the crafts they’d used to carry Wycome’s refugees to Starkhaven. Having done it once before, Isseya and Calien had learned to recognize the weak points in the vessels, and when they explained the problems to Ogosa, the dwarf was quick to devise structural improvements that would enable their new vehicles to carry heavier loads across the uneven terrain of the mountains.